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H H PPP CCC UK NATIONAL HPC SERVICE
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HHHHH PPP C x x provided by
H H P C C xx EPCC and
H H P CCC x x CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory
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HPCx User Mailing 024 24 October 2003
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Greetings--
TERAGYROID: AN INTERCONTINENTAL GRID PROJECT
The Project
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TeraGyroid is a project which will link the leading HPC centres in the
UK and US in a Grid to perform the largest ever lattice-Boltzmann
simulations, involving lattices of over one billion sites. Visualised
output will be streamed to collaborating researchers at Access Grid
nodes in various places in the UK and the US, who will be able to
steer the computations in real time.
This ambitious project will integrate a substantial part of the
world's supercomputing power into a single resource. Participants
will include both of the UK's centres at HPCx and CSAR (Manchester),
and the US's TeraGrid machines at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center,
NCSA (Illinois) and San Diego Supercomputing Center. It demonstrates
the commitment of HPCx and CSAR to UK participation at the world level
in the development of the Grid and advanced computational science.
Supercomputing exercise
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TeraGyroid's first major exercise will be conducted during the
Supercomputing 2003 event (November 17 - 21). This will require us to
dedicate the whole of HPCx and the CSAR Green system to TeraGyroid
during Supercomputing, and for six preparatory sessions leading up to
it. During these times HPCx and Green will not be generally available
to users. The times we are planning at present are the following.
Thursday 30th October: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time
Tuesday 4th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time
Thursday 6th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time
Tuesday 11th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time
Thursday 13th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time
Saturday 15th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time
Tuesday 18th November 24.00 - Thursday 21st November 24.00 UK time -
Supercomputing exercise
We will try to stick to these times, but as the work has to be
coordinated with all the sites in the US it may be necessary to vary
some of the later ones.
Obviously this project will be inconvenient to some users, and we
apologise for that in advance. However, we hope that users will
agree that it is important for us to represent the UK in a project of
such international significance. We have tried to reduce the impact
by keeping these sessions to the minimum and by placing them mostly
outside the working day.
Supercomputing 2003: http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/
Scientific background
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TeraGyroid is a high-end computing Grid project integrating UK and US
TeraGrid resources to carry out grid-based lattice-Boltzmann
simulations of defect dynamics in amphiphilic liquid crystals.
An amphiphile is a chemical species whose molecules consist of a
hydrophobic tail attached to a hydrophilic head. This dichotomy
causes the molecules to self-assemble into complex morphologies when
dispersed in solvents, binary immiscible fluid mixtures or melts.
Some mesophases are liquid crystalline, with features intermediate
between a liquid and a solid. The gyroid is one of these: ubiquitous
in biological systems, it has important applications in membrane
protein crystallisation, controlled drug release and biosensors.
Being a mesophase, the gyroid exhibits weak crystallinity and the
presence of defects, which play an important rôle in determining its
mechanical properties. The scientific objective of the TeraGyroid
project is to study defect pathways and dynamics in gyroid
self-assembly via the largest set of lattice-Boltzmann (LB)
simulations ever performed, involving lattices of over one billion
sites. The LB model (LB3D) has an unrivalled ability to describe the
dynamics and hydrodynamics of binary immiscible and ternary
amphiphilic fluids. The TeraGyroid project couples cutting-edge grid
technologies within the Reality Grid environment including
high-performance computing, visualisation and computational steering
capabilities to produce a major leap forward in soft condensed matter
simulation.
TeraGyroid is the result of an international collaboration linking the
USA's TeraGrid and the UK's Level Two Grid, funded by NSF and EPSRC.
Trans-Atlantic optical bandwidth is supported by British
Telecommunications.
Regards
--John
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--
John Fisher j.fisher@epcc.ed.ac.uk
HPCx User Administration and Helpdesk
HPCx: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk Helpdesk: support@hpcx.ac.uk
Phone: +44 131 650 5029 Fax: +44 131 650 6555